The New York Times has a rather strange visit [3] with Deputy Drug Czar Tom McClellan in which he says he only took the job because his son had recently died from a drug overdose and now admits that he hates working there:
In a recent interview in his office here — still sparsely decorated except for a photocopied picture of his family, including his surviving son and two young grandsons (or "grand felons," as he called them) — Dr. McLellan put his feet up on the coffee table and declared, "I hate this job."
"This is a job that needs scientific background," he went on. "But if you come to it with the kind of desires to turn everything into a scientific experiment, you will have your poor little heart broken."
I don't understand. Did Tom McClellan think they cared about science at the Office of National Drug Control Policy? Maybe if someone had shown him Stoners in the Mist [4], he could have figured out what he was getting himself into before it was too late.
Regardless, it's just weird to find the new deputy drug czar already hating on his own job in The New York Times. It strikes me as yet another indication of what a sickly and irrelevant institution the ONDCP has become. Sometimes, I feel like it's just a matter of time before the whole thing collapses in a poignant public spectacle:
Dr. McClellan might be our best candidate yet for bringing that beautiful sight to life.